“Still there, is it?”
Maddy shivered.
“Slow it down,” Loki said. “I’m trying to concentrate.”
“Slow it down? What with?”
“You’ve got weapons, haven’t you? Use them.”
Weapons? Maddy looked down at her empty hands. Well, she supposed she had mindweapons, of a kind—but surely nothing to halt the moving mountain at their back. Loki had stopped now, the scene a broad square passageway flagged with large flat stones. In each stone was set a tiny grille of black metal. From some of these apertures sounds came—cries, groans, screams—only some of them human.
The thing—or things—that pursued them filled the corridor. Once more the size had changed to accommodate the space, and now Maddy could see that it was indeed made up of thousands of creatures, breaking apart and re-forming in constant movement. Ephemera, Loki had called them. Maddy saw them as thin filaments of animated light, parasites wriggling through the spaces between the Worlds. If even one of them touched her, she knew, they could sever flesh from bone; they would unmake her, burrowing under her fingernails, moving through her bloodstream, eating through her pores, working their way into spine and brain. And there were millions of them.
What could she do?
The ephemera seemed to sense her hesitation. The illusion of a single creature had dissolved and they were everywhere now, in front of them and behind, filling the corridor from floor to ceiling, writhing like deadly maggots toward them.
Glancing at Loki, Maddy could see that he was casting runes, casting them very fast and urgently in his deft and fluttering style—as she watched, she saw the corridor color veer from iron gray to the gray of a thundercloud; the metal grilles of the openings set into the stone changed shape slightly, from square to oblong—
“Got it,” he said. He dropped to his knees above one of the openings, felt with his fingertips for the edge of the grille.
The approaching ephemera seemed to understand; their movement increased and they began to swarm toward him, the filaments breaking into tiny particles, hopping like fleas across the bare stone.
Loki flinched but kept working. “Keep them off me,” he hissed at Maddy, without taking his attention away from the grille.
Maddy opened her mouth to protest, but an image stopped her—she saw those creatures pouring into her mouth, down her throat, filling her like a water skin with their rotten-meat stench—and she shut her mouth again tight.
How? she thought silently. How did you stop a monster that could be anything, take any shape?
This is a place where all things are possible.
All things? thought Maddy.
Once more she looked down at her weaponless hands. Less than a spear’s length away, the air was thick with ephemera. They were even closer to Loki, sensing his purpose, gathering over his head like a wave…
Maddy took a deep breath, focusing all of her glam for the strike. It brightened, veering from reddish brown to brilliant orange, crackling with energy from fingertips and palms. She sought for a rune that might slow down her attackers. ýr, the Protector, was closest to hand; holding its image in her mind, she closed her eyes against the wave of ephemera and flung the rune as hard as she could.
There was a crack like a whip and a smell of burning.
Opening her eyes, Maddy saw that a dome of red light some six feet in diameter had appeared around Loki and herself, against which the ephemera crawled and slithered. It was thin, its surface as delicate and as iridescent as a wash-day soap bubble, but for the moment it held, and Maddy could see that wherever the ephemera touched it, their airy bodies crackled and dissolved, leaving a residue of soapy scum over the surface of the shield.
“It worked,” she said in disbelief. “Did you see that? Did you…?”
But Loki wasted no time in congratulations. Using T ýr to prize open the grille, he had finally managed to lift it aside. Below him a dead blackness yawned. Sliding his feet rapidly into the hole, Loki prepared to let himself drop into the void.
“Is my father down there?” said Maddy.
“No,” said Loki.
“Then what are we—?”
“That shield won’t last,” said Loki grimly. “And unless you want to be here when it fails, I suggest you shut up and follow me.”
And with that he pushed himself into the hole and vanished from sight. There was no sound as he fell. Below him there was nothing but darkness.
“Loki?” she called.
No one replied.
In that moment Maddy was frozen with fear. Had Loki tricked her? Had he fled? She peered down into the empty hole, half expecting to see a wave of ephemera surging out of the pit at her feet.
Instead there was silence. Trust me, he’d said. But he’d lied to her. And now Maddy remembered the Oracle’s words: I see a traitor at the gate.
Was Loki the traitor?
There was one way to tell.
Closing her eyes, Maddy jumped.
There was no sense at all of falling. Maddy passed from the corridor to the cell below in a single step and for long seconds remained in utter darkness, with nothing at her feet and nothing above her and no clue—not even an echo—as to what she might now expect.
“Loki?” she whispered in the dark.
Then she cast Sól, the Bright One, and the space lit up in brilliant light.
Relief filled Maddy as she saw that Loki was still there. They were standing on a narrow ledge, looking across at a slab of rock roughly the size of a barn door, apparently suspended from nothing at all over a gulf that swallowed the light of Sól and gave back nothing but emptiness in return. The rock was revolving slowly in midair some fifty feet away from them, and now Maddy could see that there were chains set into the underside of the stone, from which a set of shackles dangled empty.
But it was the creature that clung to the rock’s surface that really caught Maddy’s attention. A huge snake, its scales gleaming in every imaginable shade of black, its eyes like electricity, its coils chained twice around the circling rock and dropping down into darkness.
It caught sight of Maddy and opened its jaws; even at such a distance the stench of its venom was enough to make her eyes water.
“It’s all right,” said Loki. “He can’t move from the rock.”
Maddy stared. “How do you know that?”
“Trust me. I know. Hang around the locals for a year or two, and you tend to pick up that kind of information.” He narrowed his eyes at the circling snake. “Imagine it, Maddy, if you can. To be chained to that rock, upside down, with that thing…” He shivered. “You can see why I’d be willing to do pretty much anything to free myself, can’t you?”
As if it had heard, the snake gave a hiss.
“I know, I know,” Loki said. “But really, I had no choice. I knew I could escape alone—Netherworld’s a big place and it might have taken them centuries to find out I was missing—but if I’d tried to free you as well—”
“Excuse me,” said Maddy, “but are you talking to the snake?”
“That’s not just any snake,” said Loki. “Maddy, allow me to introduce Jormungand. Otherwise known in polite circles as the World Serpent, Thor’s Bane, or the Dragon at Yggdrasil’s Root. My son.”
9
Far away in World’s End, in a secure chamber of the Universal City, an earnest discussion was under way. The Council of Twelve had been in debate for a number of hours now, following the disquieting news from the distant Uplands.
As a result of this disturbing information, the Council had been convened with a haste that seemed to many unseemly. In normal circumstances there would have been several pre-Council discussion meetings, a week of prayer and fasting, a lengthy meditation on the Elementary, Intermediary, and Advanced States of Bliss, and, finally, a gathering of elders armed with the Word, from whose learned ranks would be chosen the twelve members who would invoke the Nameless.
This present gathering had been assembled in a matter of
days, which, in the opinion of its spokesman, Magister Emeritus Number 369 (a tiny octogenarian in scarlet robes, whose giant throne of office dwarfed him to the size of a small monkey), showed a rashness of purpose that was both dangerous and undignified.
However, the others had not agreed, and as a result there had been as little ceremony as possible as the twelve members—all high-ranking officials of the Order—had been chosen by lot for the privilege of Communion.
Among them were the Magister Emeritus himself; his colleague Magister 73838, a mere Junior at seventy-five; and a number of other Magisters of varying seniority, including the Order’s oldest member, Magister Number 23.
All had fasted, prayed, and purged; all had spoken the relevant canticles and meditated deeply on the Word. Now, at last, they were gathered in the Council Chamber, a large auditorium at the center of the Universal City, where a dozen rows of empty pews encircled a single large conference table of heavy carved oak.
Like many of the Order’s most secret ceremonies, Communion with the Nameless was not an especially interesting spectacle. Anyone watching would have found it dull in the extreme—just twelve old men in red robes sitting around a table with the Good Book on a reading stand in the center. Several of them looked asleep; it might have been a dull seminar, with the reader slumped over his lectern in the dusty afternoon sun.
Even the Word, uttered an hour later by every man at the table simultaneously, might not have been easily detectable to a spectator. It came as a shiver in the air, as if a small child had skimmed a stone across the reflection of the Worlds, causing a series of widening ripples that went all the way to the far side.
Magister Number 23 felt it first. He was the most senior member of the Council of Twelve, a man as dry and shrunken as a winter apple who, it was rumored, could trace his parentage right back to the childhood of the Order.
O Nameless, he said, and a tremor went through the members at the table as each man—all of whom had experienced Communion at least two dozen times in their lives—struggled with the same sensation that had so nearly broken Elias Rede.
Of course, these men were Elders of the Order. That made a difference; and yet even Magister 23 felt the burden heavy on his shoulders as the chill presence of the Nameless filled his mind.
I HEAR YOU, said a Voice that resonated through every mind in the Council of Twelve and sent a shiver up the spine of every Magister, Examiner, or scrub in the Order itself.
Magister Number 23 felt the weight of that Voice like a mountain upon him. At the back of his mind he seemed to glimpse the far distant shore of the Nameless’s domain, a place where Perfect Order ruled supreme and perfect bliss was served out to such of the faithful who could endure it.
The Magister wondered whether he could endure it. Even after his long meditations he feared his mind was all Chaos, and the fear he had so assiduously hidden during all his career as a Magister bobbed to the surface like a rotten cork.
O Nameless, he thought. Forgive my doubts. And forgive this delay in contacting You on a matter that concerns You closely. One colleague has already died—we sensed it in Communion—
There was irritation in the Voice. What, did you think to gain immortality in My service?
Forgive me, said the Magister. But our colleague had taken a prisoner. A man he was sure was a general of the enemy—Odin himself, whom we had thought long dead. But our colleague was killed before this man could be Interrogated, and we have not yet managed to identify the enemy’s associates, although we believe that one of them may be his half brother, Loki—
I know this, interrupted the Voice. I presume that you have not entered Communion with Me simply to give Me information I already possess. How does it proceed?
O Nameless, said the Magister. A development has occurred.
A development?
There was a pause that lifted the hairs on the Magister’s neck. Then, hesitantly, he began to explain. How a parson of the Folk had acquired the Word in Communion with Elias Rede; how they had formed an alliance with the Faërie and were even now in pursuit of their enemy as he worked his way toward Netherworld—
But it’s all right, added the Magister hastily. Our agent has it under control. The enemy will be stopped in time. He will—
Be silent!
Another pause, during which all twelve members of the Council felt their thoughts being rifled by a presence immeasurably superior and entirely without compassion. Elsewhere in World’s End the ripples were felt: heads ached, stomachs griped, eyes crossed, and a sensation of icy rage swept through every member of the Order as its Founder searched—with increasing urgency—for the information It sought.
Half-seen images flickered through their minds—images that might be visions, prophecies, or dreams: a woman in wolf skin, a woman with two faces, a Hill that led to Netherworld, a girl…
I see him not. It is unclear. The Lands of Chaos cloud My sight—
The images stopped. Then came a moment of eerie calm…
I see him. Yes. And—
Now came another of those tantalizing images—
—a symbol written in dark red. They sensed it as a glyph of power, but even Magister 23 hesitated to identify it. The Nameless, however, was quick to react.
In a moment a sudden terrible blast tore through the minds of the Council of Twelve. Eleven of them collapsed outright; Magister 23 suffered a massive stroke and died on the spot, Magisters 73838 and 369 suffered permanent brain damage, and all the Council members developed gushing nosebleeds.
Trickery! hissed the Nameless. Trickery, incompetence, and lies!
Throughout the Order, people collapsed; heads ached and elderly Magisters lost bowel control as the Voice of the Nameless vented Its displeasure in full. Then It seemed to calm a little. Its fury ebbed from homicidal rage to a glacial lull.
Magister Number 262—the one member of the Council of Twelve who had remained conscious—pressed both hands to his spouting nose. What is it, O Nameless? he thought desperately. What does it mean?
There was a long, ominous silence. Then the Voice in his mind dropped to a purr.
It matters not, the Nameless said. I have planned for this too.
Once more the Magister shivered as the Nameless shuffled minds throughout the Order as if they were nothing more to It than a pack of cards. Images flickered into his mind, too many to identify: faces familiar and unfamiliar, landscapes from nightmare.
When it was over, the Voice spoke again, and this time It addressed the Magister by his true name.
Fortune Goodchild, It said, and every man in the Order heard his own true name spoken and shivered. Too long have you sat in comfort and complacency here in your fortress of World’s End. Too long have you nursed your little empire, forgetting who really rules the world. Now is the time to prove your loyalty. The Seer-folk have shown themselves at last. I knew they would; I feel their presence. The battleground is chosen, the lines drawn. We march today.
Today? whispered the Magister.
Do you have some criticism of My strategy, Fortune Goodchild? said the Nameless.
No, no, said Fortune hastily. Of course not, O Nameless. It’s simply—ah—it’s a month’s hard march to the valley of the Strond. By the time we get there—
We’re not going to the valley of the Strond.
Then where do we march? said the Magister, thinking, Oh, you fool, you had to ask.
The Nameless caught his thought, and for a second Fortune Goodchild cringed under the weight of Its terrible amusement.
Where else? It said. To Netherworld.
10
“Your son?” said Maddy. “Gods, Loki, is there anyone here you’re not related to?”
Loki gave a sigh. “You know, I was once…involved…with a demon called Angrboda. She was a changeling, a child of Chaos, and she liked to experiment. The results were sometimes—exotic, that’s all.”
The giant snake flexed its jaws. It smelled worse than anything Maddy had ever encounter
ed before: a leaden stench of venom, oil, and charnel house. Its eyes were like pockets of tar, its body as thick as a man’s.
Legend had it that the World Serpent was once so large that only the One Sea could contain it and that it had grown to encircle the Middle World, moving down toward Yggdrasil to feed upon its roots. In fact, it was smaller, but it was still the largest snake that Maddy had ever seen, and there was a disquieting intelligence in those evil eyes.
“It looks as if it understands,” she said.
“Well, of course he understands,” said Loki. “You don’t think they’d leave a stupid creature to guard me, do you?”
“To guard you?” said Maddy. “Do you mean when you were a prisoner here?”
“Quick, aren’t you?” said Loki irritably. “We’ve got forty-eight minutes left,” he said, reading from the deathwatch Hel had given him, “and if I have to go through every little detail a dozen times—”
“All right, I’m sorry,” said Maddy. “It’s just that—if it’s your son, then why—?”
“That’s just their idea of humor,” said Loki. “To have me tormented by my own son—not that I was much of a father, I’m afraid—”
Once more the World Serpent flexed its jaws.
“Oh, do shut up,” Loki told it. “I’m back here now.” He turned to Maddy. “His coils go all the way down to the river Dream,” he said, indicating the snake’s long body. “Haven’t you ever dreamed of snakes? Yes? That was Jormungand, or some Aspect of him, slithering through the dreamworld into your mind. That’s how with his help I reached the river and made my escape, in my fiery Aspect, into Dream and from there, at last, into living flesh.”
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